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WELCOME
Presented By : Rincy Elizabeth Sam
ADDRESSING THE SUBJECT -Catherine Belsey
About The Author :
Catherine Belsey is a British Literary Critic Visiting Professor of English at the University of
Derby Fellow of English Association – Fellow of Learned
Society of Wales Her work Critical Practice (1980), an influential
post structuralist text - suggests new directions for literary studies.
Also wrote about the effect of romance novels on modern soiciety
Criticized the traditional ways of criticism Made a scientific analysis of the techniques and
styles of the last century Other major works includes : • Desire : Love Stories in Western Culture (1980)• Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden: The
Construction of Family Values in Early Modern Culture (1999)
Addressing the Subject
Taken from Critical Practice Belsey attempts to explain the process by which a
text constructs reader as its subject She works from general to specific Introduces the concept of Lacan’s ‘mirror image’,
Saussure’s ‘language as a system’ and Althusser’s ‘ideology’.
She draws on Althusser’s concept of ideology to explain how a reader is fixed in a particular ideological position within a text
How a reader is constituted as a subject by a text Analyses Lacan’s theory of mirror image as a
formative of the ‘I’ Adding insights into ‘Resistance’, and‘Desire’ Explains about the complementary relationship
between a reader and a text on lines of subjectivity
Ideology
A set of ideas that determines one’s goals, expectations and actions
The word ‘Ideology’ coined by Destutt de Tracy in 1796 by fusing ‘idea’ and ‘logy’ to mean ‘’science of ideas’’
Marx defined ideology as a range of representations related to the real relationships which people live
Ideology is not simply a set of iluusions
Ideology can’t be defined as a whole truth. It presents partial truths
It is a set of omissions, gaps, rather than lies, appears to provide answers to questions
Ideology has no creators According to Althusser, ideological practises are
produced and reproduced in the institutions of our society – Ideological State Apparatuses, ISA
The Subject
The subject is what speaks or signifies Traditional sense of subject was ego or self Subject represents the individual’s self-consiousness
and consiousness of the self For post-structuralism the subject is rather secondary,
constructed by the language and volatile Language allows an individual to refer to himself as ‘I’
and everyone except him as ‘You’ ‘I’ has a set of beliefs and practices which is at
variance with that of ‘You’
Within ideology the individual speaker is the origin of the meaning of his utterence
According to Derrida language is not aa function of speaking subject
It implies that subject is inscribed in the language, that it is a function of language
Psychoanalysis
Jacques Lacan,eminent French psychoanalyst argues that subjectivity is not acquired, but created
He observes at the age of six, an infant has no sense of identity :it is not able to distinguish itself from others
But between the age of six and eighteen months, children became capable of recognising their mirror image
The subject is not static
After the first stage of recognition, the child enters the ‘symbolic order’
To be a part of social formation, a child must have recourse to language
The child not only identifies itself as ‘I’ , but also as ‘he’ and ‘she’, ‘son’ or ‘daughter’, according to the subject positions it happens to be in
Resistance
Ideology has the role of constituting individuals as subjects, because it is produced in the identification of ‘I’ of language
It is not easy to come out of it To resist ideology means to refuse act or speak Ideology addresses concrete individuals as subjects It may be possible to resist ideology in a theoretical
level with a concept of ruling ideology that is by protesting against it
There is a distinction between the consious subject represented in a speech and the subject speaks
In the gap formed we find unconsious- in the moment of entry into the symbolic order
It is the consiousness which repress human beings in obedience to the discipline imposed by language and culture
Unconsiousness is the only source of disruption of the obedience
Desire
Once the child enters the symbolic order, it overcomes its difficulty in the pre-linguistic stage to vent its wants
The acquisition of lanuage helps him to phrase his desires
Language satisfies the child’s wish to express its desires
It confines the wishes to those that can be expressed through conventions of language
For instance when a child says it wants a rose, the rose it has in mind may be white in colour, though it may get red.
The concept of subject is constantly in the process of construction and deconstruction
Driven by the unconsious desire the subject is restless, dissatisfied and eager to change
This dissatisfaction leads to the possiblity of transformation
The Subject and the Text
A reader in a way author also By interpreting the signs in a text in a personal
fashion every reader creates his own versions of the same literary text
Every reader brings his own aspirations and dreams in the reading of a text
The quality of our literary experience depends not only on the text and on what the author offers
But also depends on the releveance of padt experience and presnet intersets that the reader brings in
o Interpellation A concept used in Marxist theoryExplains how individuals are constructed as
subjects by major social and political institutions
Propounded by Louis Althusser in his Essays on Ideology
No texts create a determinate meaning but by social formation
o Classic RealismThe dominant literary form of the 19th
centurySubjectivity is the major theme of Classic
RealismInconsistency of character or the
inappropriateness of particular actions to particular characters is seen as a weakness of classic realism
Conclusion
Catherine Belsey streches toeards an explicitly philosophical approach to literary theory
She works towards a pluralistic theory of interpretation but her work is not a post modern work
She yokes together linguist theories, psychoanalysis and Marxist philosophy
Explains the interplay between a text, reader and the social formation
She succeede in uniting various disciplines in analysing the literary texts
THANK YOU